Panorama softwares to assemble the photos

There are two reasons why your photos might not assemble correctly : a wrong setting of the nodal point and maybe even more, optical distortions of your lens or zoom lens. It is due to the form of the lens: an aspheric lens. Here is how to know it and correct it...

All the photos of the sphere have been shot and prepared and are ready to be assembled by a panorama software on one or several ranges. At that point, it is still not about using a virtual tour creation software like Pano2VR because the panorama isn't assembled yet. But this type of software needs a flat image, possibly on 180 x 360°. Few of them offer assembling qualities, flexibility of use, productivity and can thus be considered professional, or at least, top-range. In this page, I'll tell you all about my experience and the qualities of each of them.

When we were trying to stitch a simple panorama to print it for example, we saw in the tutorial dedicated to panorama assembling that the photographer had numerous choices to make in terms of geometric projections in order to convey HIS message. For the creation of virtual tours, only one geometric projection can be used: the spherical geometric projection. Let's see this now...

The key points if you're a beginner...

Here are the key points to remember about panorama assembling. The rest of this page is aimed at those who want to learn more.

A virtual tour is realized in two steps: firstly, you need to stitch all the photos together using a panorama software like PTGui. Then the panorama is opened in another software, a virtual tour creation software like Pano2VR in order to create this virtual tour in itself.

The only geometric projection to choose when you want to realize a virtual tour is the spherical projection during the assembling.

Nowadays, the two best pieces of panorama software are PTGui, in English only, and Hugin 2018, very similar to PTGui but available in other languages.

Geometric transformations are detailed on the page dedicated to geometric projections but we'll see very quickly here that only one interests us: the spherical projection.
Indeed, it is the only geometric projection that virtual tour creation software can handle. Assembling software, when it's given photos to assemble a panorama 180 x 360°, stitches them automatically in this geometric projection mode. They'll try to assemble, for instance in the example here, eight photos shot with a full-format Fisheye, once the nadir corrected, to render a panorama that will look like that:

The central part of the photo is rendered "classically" but the more we get away from the middle part, the more the image is distorted... It is especially sensible at the bottom of the panorama.

Panorama softwares

There are many of them and I imagine that most of you already have an opinion on the subject. Each will have its favourite because lots of assembling pieces of software, once mastered, are amazingly efficient. You can also be attracted to one panoramic piece of software but because of your lens and its distortions, have to choose a different panorama software, more powerful in this case... Firstly, the aim of this tutorial is to introduce a few pieces of software that seem to be reference and I'll complete that list as my reviews go along.

Caution though! It is not a list of virtual tour creation software but of panorama software. Virtual tour creation pieces of software will be detailed in the last page of this tutorial.

PTGui Pro 11.6

€199.00

My opinion on PTGui Pro 11.6

Only in English, it is an excellent assembly software that has no competitor since the closure of Kolor. Its historical users obviously don't care about it and the new ones will have to get used to it! New version 11.6 - Learn more and download

My note : 10/10 - PTGui's first-time users love it and that's understandable. It was Autopano's competitor... but Kolor has just closed. We no longer have a choice, but it's serious because it's an excellent software.

Hugin 2018

Free !

My opinion on Hugin 2018

This multi-language, open source assembly software is highly valued by the discerning user community. Do not hesitate to put your hands in the grease! Quite close to PTGui it is also very powerful but some troublesome limitations compared to APG or PTGui. To always have close to you in case ... - Learn more

My note : 8,5/10 - Hugin is very close to PTGui in its interface and its use because it initially uses the same tools Panoramatools but it is free!.

Photomerge CC 2018

Subscription : $9.99/mo

My opinion on Photomerge de Photoshop CC 2018

Photomerge is a Photoshop plugin that allows to assemble panoramas, possibly spherical but Attention! not complete. Photomerge does not know how to correctly assemble a complete 180 x 360 ° image for example.
It is very easy to use but also rather limited and really lacking flexibility of use. That said, the little it knows how to do it does very well, that is to say multi-ranged panoramas that do not go from floor to ceiling. The latest version even includes the ability to assemble Raw and generate a panorama in RAW format! - Learn more

My note : 8,0/10 - There may be cases where we need to assemble a panorama punctually and it is possible to do it with Photomerge, a plugin integrated in Photoshop. Photomerge lacks flexibility and possibilities, but what it knows how to do is often very well assembled in an interface that is easy to understand without a learning curve. Credible punctual alternative.

PanoramaStudio 3.1.0 / Pro

$39.95 / $79.90

My opinion on PanoramaStudio 3.1.0 / Pro

This assembly software, multilingual, is very similar to PTGui in the approach and the interface. The tools therefore seem the same! And I happened to succeed assemblies with PS 3 that I did not manage - automatically - to do with Autopano Giga. The comparison stops there because APG is really more flexible to use ... but it costs is more expensive - Learn more and download software

My note : 8,5/10 - 8.5 because frankly it works very well and it costs significantly less than Autopano Pro version (3X cheaper!).

The process of panorama assembling

Here again, it is very simple even though each software has its own assembling process, always pretty much the same nowadays. In this tutorial, I describe the process extensively with Autopano Giga.

The steps

But schematically the steps can be summed up as follows:

Open all the images you just prepared in the software in order to stitch them;

If the software doesn't detect automatically the lens with which the photos have been shot, check that the software is using the right lens model, meaning: fisheye or rectilinear. With certain pieces of panorama software, double-check that the software is using the model of your lens in order to correct its distortions. However, I'd rather do it before using Lens Correction in Photoshop's Camera Raw.

Caution! Unlike with a simple assembling, check that the geometric projection mode is the spherical one if you haven't assembled a 180° x 360°. In the event of a complete sphere, the software always chooses the spherical mode by default.

The software will then start working and give its verdict moments later. You may then have to edit certain zones if you think they haven't been assembled well and check if the photo is correct. Important for the creation of virtual tours.

If you harmonize luminosities, double-check that your software takes into account the fact that spherical panoramas are meant to be closed in the creation of the virtual tour. Both edges of your panorama must have exactly the same luminosity.

Saving the file of the panorama

Finally, you save the final picture in whatever file you want. The format, as for it, is important to make possible further edits in Photoshop easier. That's why I chose the extension PSD/PSB by default because it's a format:

Compatible 16 bits - not very important when you're making a virtual tour: 8 bits is enough and will be chosen for the final saving, to create the virtual tour. The file will then be twice lighter.

Multilayer - very important - We'll see in the next page, dedicated to final edits, how primordial it is to make your work easier when editing assembling artefacts or unwanted items in the field of view.

Compatible with a weight over 2 Go - PSD format, well-known of Photoshop-users, turns into PSB - B for Bold - when the weight of the panorama gets over 2 Go. And this often happens in multilayer panoramic photography with cameras over 10 Mo and when you stitch at least eight photos together.

Other options are detailed for Autopano Giga in its dedicated tutorial.

Before creating your virtual tour, you still need to make the last edits on your freshly-assembled panorama, you'll make the last edits on your final panorama, the one that was just assembled in your favourite panorama software - Last final edits...

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